Overseas Trip (2)
The airport was already under our control.
Overpowering those girls wearing security badges who'd probably never fired a shot in their lives was far too easy a task for men like us, armed to the teeth with the weapons we'd smuggled in.
"Ah, it's time for me to exchange my currency, so I'll contact you later, Madam President."
"Wait—wait just a moment!"
"Don't worry. I'll bring you back a souvenir."
I hung up.
The truth was, this had been festering since I was out campaigning the last time. Meeting Kim Eunjung hadn't put me in a good mood either. And now we were getting terrorized while the political establishment sat on its hands—I'd simply had enough.
Who knows. Maybe I'd been far too docile all this time.
Hey, I do everything I'm told, so this much should be fine. Right? Because we're men in South Korea, this much should be fine. Is that tired old notion still rotting away in their heads?
Either way, it wasn't me who crossed the line first. They did. And if I never let them know they'd crossed it, they'd forget the line ever existed—and then if I ever got angry or refused, I'd be the one catching hell.
That, right there, is being a sucker.
The kind of sucker who gets told, 'What's your problem? Wasn't it fine? If it bothered you, you should've said something then. What am I supposed to do now?!'
And if instead you vent a righteous anger, make the other party understand they did something wrong, but then forgive them without demanding any penance—
That, right there, is being a good person.
But I'm neither a sucker nor a good person.
So until my fury is spent, I'm going to punish them, and I'm going to collect payment for every ounce of damage I've suffered.
Unconditionally.
"Hey, but is this actually okay?"
"If it's not, are you saying we shouldn't do it?"
There he goes again, that bastard Hyeongcheol.
At least say something that makes sense.
"Huh? I asked if you're backing out? This is something we have to do. After seeing what was done to me and the old man, you still want to swallow it? Answer me, Hyeongcheol."
Yeah, we said it ourselves.
We're heading to the airport for a trip overseas, so is it really so strange that we came armed?
Occupying the place too? Same thing.
The world's a dangerous place these days.
They say terrorists just walk the streets now.
Fucking ridiculous.
"No, that's not what I meant—"
"And look at reality. The water's already been spilled. There's nothing to be gained by backing out now."
Our hidden weapons had already been exposed, the airport was occupied, and the plane that would carry us away was inbound any minute.
"Everybody, listen up. From this moment on, if any of you bastards so much as suggests we turn back, I'll blow his skull off."
The hero of our nation.
Admiral Yi Sun-sin himself said it.
The neck of any bastard who runs from a fight he should be standing in—cut it. Without exception.
"Think it over. Either you do exactly as I say, take one clean overseas trip, and we secure our rights—or you become one tasty water buffalo and get devoured by them."
"Only one bastard here dumb enough for that—Hyeongcheol—so get on with it. Explain the plan. You said you'd tell us once we got here."
Watching the eyes of every man who'd been grumbling—from that one right there all the way down to old Hyeongcheol—come alive again was a beautiful thing.
This is how it should be.
Only then are they worthy of being called veterans.
"Right. Here's the plan."
It's simple.
Just as the saying goes—flee hell and you won't find heaven waiting—us all defecting to America together wouldn't be all that different from Korea.
Where do people think our homegrown femi movement came from in the first place?
In our country, femi-land at least concedes that men and women are different.
In America, the mere suggestion of it gets you fired from your job. The femi madness there runs that hot.
Word was that a lunatic like me was busy cleaning house over there, but if we're going to sail off to America and do that work ourselves, we might as well clean up home first.
We're not going to America.
"We're going to Japan."
But what about Japan?
The country where feminism raged first, and where society already finished suppressing it?
Perfect refuge under our current circumstances, wouldn't you say?
"By all accounts, they don't have these damn femis over there. So as both a refuge and a demonstration of our resolve to the government, our overseas trip destination is Japan."
So in the few hours before we board, we watch for signs of social change. If there aren't enough of them, we get on that plane regardless.
"Of course, if this shit-for-brains society doesn't change enough, we find our livelihood over there instead."
If we give it sufficient time and the society still doesn't change, we defect to Japan or America for good.
When I laid this out, a few of the guys asked whether we weren't about to become collaborators. Traitors abandoning the country, even.
I never dreamed I'd hear that kind of garbage, and yet—there it was.
So I answered them kindly.
My homeland, the Republic of Korea, was once a society that honored, respected, and duly compensated individual sacrifice made for the sake of the community, in accordance with its constitutional spirit.
A homeland that abandons the values of respect and consideration is no homeland of mine. And what we're doing now will become the purging of my homeland—so that one day I can look up at the sky without a single speck of shame.
In the seventies and eighties, our fathers and grandfathers sacrificed themselves to rebuild this nation—not so bastards like these could eat well and live fat.
Say that much, and they all got the message.
Deep down, they'd always known it—that our society was never one worth sacrificing blindly for the sake of others.
And starting now, we're going to change that.
"Seonghun, my boy. Let's have a serious talk, shall we? What am I supposed to do here? Hm?"
"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about that. Oh! Apparently I need to decant this lotion into a travel container. My apologies!"
I fumbled my way through the call and hung up again.
"Hey, Choi Jiwon. Where are we on what I asked for?"
"Hm? Should be happening right about now."
"It's going through properly, right?"
"Yeah. Word is the party leader's doing the announcement herself—no spokesperson, straight from the ajumma's mouth."
"Good."
This is why I got shit on and planted him there in the first place. Time to put him to use.
We're going to watch results come down two pipelines at once.
"Everyone, listen carefully. The bare minimum condition for us spending time here is this: the President herself issues a statement directly condemning everything that's happened."
"Damn right it should be. Remember how those bitches barged all the way into our homes and tore the place apart? We can't just let that slide..."
Oh, right.
They made it as far as the building itself, didn't they?
Good grief, what an idiot.
"Hey, by the way—what exactly were you doing that let those kids get that far into your place?"
"No idea. How the hell should I know?"
"Idiot."
"What was that? Says the chicken-shit who ran away with his tail between his legs."
"What did you say?"
Well, you're still here, aren't you.
Ugh.
"Seonghun, all these things the opposition is doing now—did you order all of it?"
"I know nothing about any of it. I have no idea what's going on, but I've been up all night and I really need to sleep. I'll get back to you later."
Another nibble at the line.
"Good. Unless they're complete idiots, they've figured out what we want by now."
Even a total fool should grasp it at this point.
And if not—next time the phone rings, I'll burn a life's worth of goodwill and spell it out directly.
"As I said, we'll be stuck at this airport for about four hours or so no matter what. Keep the perimeter tight, and if any bitches come close—shoot."
"Seriously? Even if soldiers show up? You're saying I should actually shoot?"
"Yeah. The military moving directly on our account... that probably won't happen."
I'd already tipped off Kim Eunjung.
Told her: if you've got the guts, move.
Honestly, if a women's combat unit that had served on the front lines showed up, they'd give me some pause...
But I didn't think we'd lose even if it came to a fight.
"If the military gets serious, then honestly, it's over. At that point you run—no looking back, no hesitation."
We're war veterans, we're armed, and there's no reason we'd lose a brawl or even a brief urban skirmish.
The only scenario with no answer is the military itself striking this airport—or our plane—with ordnance.
Then it's one of two things: we all die, or we escape to safety and defect. Nothing in between.
"Everyone else—use the airport facilities, get some rest."
If a man can't stomach this much, then he deserves to be a water buffalo with the rest of them.
And besides, this is exactly Plan A I told them about beforehand.
No one's going to bolt out of fear.
And if anyone runs in front of my eyes, I'll punch a giant air hole in the back of his skull.
I pulled the men who needed rest from the command post I'd set up along the corridor with a clear line to the runway.
Ugh.
"Yes, this is Park Seonghun."
"I'd say... it's time we had our conversation, wouldn't you? Yes?"
"I suppose... it is. You do know what has to be done, don't you?"
"I do. The opposition and I are gathering the press corps assigned to the Blue House as we speak. We're preparing a press conference."
"Excellent. One more coin, please."
"What on earth does that mean?"
"What does it look like? It means you've just earned the coin to play one more round, Madam President."
"My congratulations."
"I'm grateful to you, but..."
"Why the long face? Weren't you the one who crossed the line, Madam President? We handled our duties—we handled everything that was ours to do, flawlessly—"
And God knows I played the perfect dog. Met with Kim Eunjung, sucked her off five times a day, every day, like clockwork.
Everything that was mine to do, I did.
"It was you who betrayed us, Madam President."
"I know... I know I've been distant with you all lately. But isn't this going too far?"
And now she's playing the victim.
"Excuse me? No. If anything, the fact that we haven't boarded that plane—while nobody would ever know—means we're holding onto the last shred of conscience we have as citizens of the Republic of Korea."
I meant that.
If it weren't for that last shred, I'd have been on that plane before any rat or sparrow noticed a thing.
"I understand... I understand. So what is it that you truly want?"
"Hm... yes. I'll tell you plainly. We want the atmosphere of this society itself to change. We want society as a whole to respect and show consideration for our sacrifices, and to compensate them properly. And to that end, we want that four-letter ideology—that woman's ideology and her organization—gone. The one that defames us without a shred of evidence."
"Seonghun... you do know there's a thing called freedom of expression, don't you?"
"Of course I do. Which is exactly why I know we can't stop those words from being said in the first place."
"But we do want the atmosphere changed—the one where society bends its ear to nonsense that isn't even true, just because its voice is loud."
Freedom of expression is a value worth protecting.
But that doesn't mean I'll stand by while society mindlessly swallows every piece of garbage that comes out of a woman's mouth in the name of that freedom.
"If this doesn't happen, we're not coming back. From this point on, handle it as you see fit."
Figure it out yourself. And Godspeed.